I'm not really happy about this either, there's a strong case to be made for tariffs to be limited to enemies, rivals and economic cheaters.

But on the other hand, the US's entire industrial base has fallen into complete ruin and needs to be rebuilt. Broad tariffs will help with that.

I see both sides of the issue, and I'm not really sure which is right. But the political leadership has made its choice; now the rest of us are along for the ride.

Personally I'm skeptical it will work out exactly as hoped, but I'm still decently optimistic it will put us in a better position than we had before.

One good thing is that everyone's now on notice: Taking advantage or over-relying on the US now has consequences. It's no longer an all-benefit, no-risk strategy.

Undoubtedly there will be short-term pain but that's the price of fixing the disastrous neoliberal trade policies that destroyed the Rust Belt.

> It's no longer an all-benefit, no-risk strategy.

Interesting when the US has benefited more from this system than almost anyone else.

You have massive economic growth compared to almost all developed countries and (according to your words) don’t even have to work for it. Can hardly blame the rest of the world for US government/etc. failing to fairly distribute the value US is extracting from the global economy.

>But on the other hand, the US's entire industrial base has fallen into complete ruin and needs to be rebuilt. Broad tariffs will help with that

It won’t, unless they’re sustained for a long time, longer than Trump will be president and even then I’m not sure. It won’t be like it was in any case.

If anyone actually cares about undoing the externalized costs of businesses moving their manufacturing overseas it should be to invest in re-training, re-education, fostering R&D and targeting industries we can have global advantages in. Get people working on things that will sustain themselves without major trade interventions.

The entire premise of helping our industrial base is extremely hollow and doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. Especially since this isn’t being followed with any reforms or subsidies that will do anything to help. There’s no talk of it coming either. It’s hand waved away.

At any rate, why does it matter? What non critical manufacturing benefits from being in the US? What benefit does the US get if any of this non critical manufacturing comes back? Why not invest in new industries to take its place? Invest, retrain, reskill, retool. Those should have been the mantras. Not bad trade policy. Not throwing away the rules based order on effectively a whim.

>One good thing is that everyone's now on notice: Taking advantage or over-relying on the US now has consequences. It's no longer an all-benefit, no-risk strategy.

It never was, not really. There’s no evidence that our faithful (re: the EU, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan etc) were getting all the benefits without giving up something in return, in some manner. Our close allies always maintained symbiotic relationships with the US.

The biggest of which is the USD status as reserve currency. That gives the US such immense power that it’s easy to forget just how big a deal it is. It was also technology sharing, intelligence sharing, trade, international finance etc.

It’s not a good thing this is breaking down

As for the Rust belt. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it’s not going to recover. There’s no chance it ever meaningfully does, but doubly so because there is no plan, no funding. Nothing.

I don’t understand any of this unfounded confidence

> As for the Rust belt. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it’s not going to recover. There’s no chance it ever meaningfully does

> I don’t understand any of this unfounded confidence

Usually when I post about political topics here, I'm full of skepticism, devil's advocacy and cynicism. But today, I'll reveal my true colors: I'm secretly an optimist.

I really, truly believe that human progress has a generally positive trajectory. That technology will continue to progress. And such progress generally improves peoples' lives and makes a positive impact on the world.

Our society used to have things figured out. We used to have a social narrative that made sense. I truly believe that we can set up a society where success and opportunities are available to anyone who's willing to make an honest effort.

Why? Because I'm an optimist. Because we already did it.

Observing the sustained, long-term backward progress, shrugging, and saying "Well, that's just the way things are now" is something that I do not understand and do not accept. The idea that that's truly the way of things seems wrong and counterintuitive.

Both objectively so: It seems to go against the model backed by most of human history, that the trajectory of progress is generally forward.

And subjectively so: If there is truly no path forward, that set of affairs isn't just an intellectual curiosity. Living in a world where that's true is a genuinely frightening prospect.

Let me just emphasize how absurd it is. Our society solved the problem of routing good economic opportunities to most people and then one day we just stopped doing that.

The solution's so obvious it's a farce. Just go back to what we were doing before! Global trade used to be expensive, and a lack of global trade seems to be a big piece of the puzzle as to why the economy was the way it was back then. To me, making global trade expensive again seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to attempt!

As for your last paragraph…in those days the US was the only country in the world that could manufacture stuff. Africa and Asia and Eastern Europe had been wrecked and would remain devastated by imperialism, war, failed attempts to try to make a planned economy work, etc.

Over the past few decades, the rest of the world has managed to develop and compete.

In regards to making global trade expensive again….the policies that the United States is pursuing won’t make global trade more expensive. It will just make trade with the United States more expensive. The other countries will continue to trade with each other cheaply and will continue to gain prosperity and continue to advance.

It is possible we may see a world in which the United States has stagnated to not compete with the rest of the world. And a world where maybe the dollar has been replaced with the euro or some other currency as the reserve currency. If that is the case…well things won’t be too good for Americans to say the least.

>The solution's so obvious it's a farce. Just go back to what we were doing before! Global trade used to be expensive, and a lack of global trade seems to be a big piece of the puzzle as to why the economy was the way it was back then

Global trade became cheap with the advent of modern container ships and their containers. This happened well before the decline of the industrial base in the 1980s

It really came from lack of investments in the sector and poor industrial policy.